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Thomas Yates
Unnamed father Trudy Yates Roy Yates |job=Day laborer |path=Arsonist Serial Killer Spree Killer Abductor Robber Stalker |signature=Two distinct signatures: *Removing his victims' reproductive organs after stabbing them *Post-mortem vocal cord removal |mo=Stabbing Disembowelment |victims=103+ killed 2 attempted 1+ victimless arson 2 stalked |status=Deceased |actor=Adam Nelson Thomas Phelan Alec Gatlin |appearance="Profiling 101" |last="Profiling 202" }} Thomas "Tommy" Yates, a.k.a. '"The Womb Raider"'Possibly an off-color pun on the Tomb Raider series, which had a pornographic parody of the same name, was a misogynistic, prolific abductor, one-time robber, and arsonist and serial-turned-spree killer and stalker who first appeared in Season Seven of Criminal Minds, mostly through flashbacks. He later escaped with twelve other serial killers in Season Eleven and reappeared in Season Twelve. Background In May 1966, Yates' mother, then-sixteen-year-old Georgina Yates, was raped by an unidentified man who was apparently never caught, and this resulted in her pregnancy with Yates. Eventually, Georgina gave birth to Yates in February of 1967. During the process, she had to have an emergency hysterectomy. While the birth was successful, she died from hemorrhaging. As a result, Yates was put under the care of his maternal grandparents, Trudy and Roy. This didn't turn out well for Yates, as he was physically and psychologically abused by Trudy, who viewed him as a demonic bastard because of the circumstances of his conception and birth. A flashback showed her shoving him down a flight of stairs, as well as forcing him to put on a dress and then locking him outside the house. She also starved him, sat on him, and made him sleep in a doghouse. In school, Yates was also bullied and he began setting fires (making him eligible for one of the signs of the Macdonald triad) and getting himself expelled from two schools. One day, when he was fifteen years old, he eventually became enraged while being bullied and killed his tormentor, stabbing him to death and also kicking him repeatedly. He was tried as a juvenile and forced to spend three years in juvie hall, plus an additional seven years in prison, before being released on parole. As an adult, Yates became a chain smoker and acquired an unspecified day-laborer job. At some point, he began serial killing throughout the West Coast, traveling down the area starting with Seattle. He targeted women who lived either high-risk or low-risk lifestyles, alternating between the two types for unknown reasons. Profiling 101 "I used to hate birthdays as a kid. That's why I like celebrating yours." After killing for at least seventeen years, during which he claimed a minimum of 101 victims, Yates returned to Seattle in 2009 after Trudy contracted lung cancer and was placed in hospital care. There, he murdered a prostitute named Rochelle Jenkins. The BAU, who had been devotedly following his case, was subsequently called in. Meanwhile, Yates abducted a soccer mom named Grace Powell. However, after Garcia found Georgina's hospital records and Prentiss and JJ interviewed Trudy at the hospital, the BAU was able to find Yates holding Grace captive in the storage container holding Trudy's old belongings. Grace is rescued by paramedics and Rossi arrest Yates, but not before he taunts the agent since he learned that Rossi was the first BAU agent to take on his case. During interrogation, Yates constantly refused to answer questions given to him by the BAU, staying silent the entire time. Eventually, he was found guilty of his crimes and put on death-row. The following year, however, he spoke up for the first time to the BAU, specifically to Rossi, when he gave him a list of forty of his victims, those who haven't been found by authorities, and reveals there are actually 101 victims. He then offered a deal to give the name of an undiscovered victim of his annually, on a day of his choosing, in exchange for the upturning of his death penalty as well as his relocation to the East Coast (his grandmother had passed away while he was in prison, and as such, there was no reason for him to remain on the West Coast anymore). Rossi accepts the deal after the BAU is able to find all forty victims. By the end of the episode, in the present day, Rossi visits Yates, who had been conveniently relocated near Quantico. Yates gives him the name of another victim and the location of the corpse before Rossi leaves. The "special day" he has chosen to disclose another victim is revealed to be Rossi's birthday. As a parting gift, Yates sings the 'Happy Birthday' song eerily. Profiling 202 .]] "If you shoot me, you save her, but then I can't tell you where I buried all those other girls over the years. But if you don't shoot me, I'm gonna kill her." At some point during his imprisonment, Yates contracted terminal cancer from his chain-smoking. On September 28, 2016, he became one of the thirteen serial killers who escaped from three different prisons, following a series of attacks by a group of anarchists, though this wasn't known at the time. Following his escape, Yates attempted to settle down and live a normal life in Richmond, Virginia. There, he met and dated an introverted woman named Jody Wilson. However, he felt he could not live up to his idealized fantasy, resulting in him killing Jody in 2017. Before he did so, he contacted Rossi to tell him he had started killing again. The next night, Yates called Rossi again, this time from Baltimore, Maryland, and tells him that he was aware of his family. Then, he informs him that he has his next victim, a prostitute named Regina Franklin, and forces Rossi to listen to her last scream before hanging up. After killing Regina, Yates dumps his car and steals a van. The next day, he observes a number of women at a park. As he does so, he begins coughing up blood. The following night, he goes into a seedier area of Baltimore and lures a prostitute named Stephanie Weatherly into his van. He is initially nonviolent with her and even gives her a cigarette at her request. Then, he starts coughing and asks Stephanie to give him a bag at her feet, which she does. Yates then takes out a knife and holds it to her neck, threatening to kill her if she screams and does not cooperate. He proceeds to hold her captive for three days, starving her all the while. Eventually, he arrives at Rossi's small estate in Quantico, Virginia, with the intention of killing Stephanie and burying her there under Rossi's nose. However, Rossi, who was home at the time, deduces Yates's intentions and confronts him in the backyard, holding him at gunpoint just as he finishes digging a grave. Yates holds Stephanie at knifepoint and proclaims that he doesn't want to die in jail. He then tauntingly says that the agent is faced with an ultimatum: if he shoots him, he will not get to know where he buried all of his undiscovered victims; if he doesn't shoot him, he will kill Stephanie anyway. Despite Rossi's protests, Yates tries to stab Stephanie in the stomach, forcing Rossi to shoot him three times in the torso. Yates then falls back onto the pile of dirt, breathes out a sigh of contentment, and dies. Modus Operandi Yates targeted Caucasian women who were surrogates for his grandmother. He had a pattern of targeting high-risk victims such as prostitutes and drug addicts, then shifting his focus to low-risk victims like college students and soccer moms, with the victims always in the same age range as him. It was initially believed that Yates killed two women every time he struck, one a high-risk victim and the other a low-risk victim. When it was discovered that Yates, by his own account, claimed hundreds of lives, it can be assumed that he never followed such a pattern as rigidly as originally thought, or only did so occasionally. He would kill in different cities on the West Coast. He abducted and restrained his victims by their wrists and ankles for days, starving and dehydrating them endlessly in order to keep them weak, referencing how his grandmother would starve him as a child. They were then killed by stabs directed at the genital area with a knife. When he disposed of the victims, Yates would dump the bodies of his high-risk victims as if they were trash, while he took some time to bury the bodies of his low-risk victims. Initially, he would repeatedly stab his victims' reproductive organs, but as he evolved, he began fatally removing said organs completely, referencing his mother being forced to have a hysterectomy and subsequently died when she was giving birth to him. He also escalated to removing his victims' vocal chords post-mortem. Following his escape from prison, Yates started killing in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. His overall M.O. devolved, since he was dying and he was focused on killing as many women as he could. As a result, he did not go through the lengthy process of starving them, exclusively targeted high-risk victims such as prostitutes (since access to them was easier compared to low-risk victims) and would bury their bodies instead of dumping them, targeted victims of other races, and no longer targeted women in his age range. The only exceptions to that were Jody Wilson, who was a low-risk victim and his girlfriend, and Stephanie Weatherly, who he starved for days in an attempt to return to the peak of his killings. After Yates abducted each of his victims, he would call Rossi with prepaid cellphones to avoid being found. During these calls, he would tell him their names and where their bodies would be found after he killed them to psychologically torture him. Profile The unsub is a white male in his early- to mid-thirties and is antisocial and has low self-esteem, so he probably keeps to himself. He needed money, so he is most likely a day laborer, with a menial and temporary job, such as a janitor or a handyman. He is personal enough to get a job wherever he went but unassuming enough to not stick out. He held and restrained his victims for days, so the unsub would need a contained space to do that. However, he is also mobile, which means he has his own transport, most likely a truck or van. When he is on the move and not settled, he would most likely live outside the vehicle. He always started with a high-risk victim first, like a prostitute or a runaway, then moved on to a low-risk victim, so it is likely his next victim would be a soccer mom in her 30s. The fact that he buried the bodies of his low-risk victims, compared to how he dumped the bodies of his high-risk victims, suggests he felt more connected towards them and expressed pity and remorse when it came to their deaths. The removal of the victims' reproductive organs may indicate that he feels a great deal of self-loathing and wishes that he was never born or had a traumatic life-changing event associated with his birth. He could have hated his own mother, as the strained mother-child relationship is a hallmark for many killers. The removal of the vocal cords was symbolic of his own silence since he was raised to believe he was worthless and unwanted, so he never had a voice of his own. His victims became surrogates for his rage and a means by which to exact his revenge. Following Yates's escape, the BAU expanded their profile on him. Yates removes his victims' reproductive organs because he hates the fact that he was even born. Historically, his victims have been right around the same age he is, but Jody Wilson and Regina Franklin are significantly younger than him. This shift in his victimology is about availability for him. Regina lived a high-risk lifestyle and therefore was an easy target. Also, the age of his victims most likely does not matter to him anymore. He definitely has a vehicle, such as a van or a truck, which he most likely stole. In the past, he had a pattern of moving from high-risk victims to low-risk victims and then back, but this is no longer the case. He also used to starve and hold his victims for days, but he removed that aspect of his M.O. in the case of his last two murders. It is believed that Yates is sick and that he feels he is running out of time. Unfortunately, that sentiment could cause him to go on some kind of spree in which he kills as many people as he can before he dies. When serial killers know their death is imminent, they typically either feel the urge to confess to their crimes, or they try to achieve a high body count, both so they can go down in history. The fact that Yates is killing again means the latter scenario is in effect and he may do that somehow through Rossi. Real-Life Comparisons According to Virgil WilliamsWilliams' chat with fans transcription, Yates was based on real-life serial killer Henry Lee Lucas - Both were prolific (possibly in Lucas' case) serial killers who grew up with at least one abusive relative (Lucas' mother and Yates' grandparents) who abused with both physical torture and cross-dressing, committed their first crimes when they were young, killed over 100 victims (possibly in Lucas' case, who claimed thousands), primarily targeted women (though Yates also killed a boy), had some sexual element in their murders (Lucas engaged in Necrophilia, while Yates stabbed and removed his victim's sex organs), stabbed them to death, were given nicknames for their crimes, mutilated their victims post-mortem, and both gave numerous confessions after they were apprehended Yates may have also been inspired by Daniel Camargo - Both were prolific and misogynistic robbers-turned serial killers and stalkers who were both abused by maternal figures in place of their real deceased mothers (Yates' grandmother and Camargo's stepmother), who would beat them and make them cross-dress (which resulted in them being bullied and them both ultimately attacking one), committed petty crimes when they were younger, both committed one murder of a minor and were incarcerated for it, both managed to escape from prison at least once and commit more murders, and during their murders they targeted females, stabbed and mutilated them (though this was just one of Camargo's methods), had dozens of confirmed kills and were believed to have killed over 100 (Camargo was convicted of 72 murders but is believed to have killed as many as 150, while Yates killed over 100, but initially only 47 were recovered), were given nicknames for their crimes, and were both extensively interviewed after their arrests. Also the way Rossi killed Yates while the latter was trying to murder a final victim could be a reflection of how Camargo was murdered in prison. And also the fact that Yates' later murders occurred alongside the activity of twelve other escaped serial killers is somewhat similar to how Camargo was compared to Pedro López. Yates may have drawn some major inspiration from Gary Ridgway - Both were prolific serial killers raised in turbulent households ruled by a domineering maternal figure (mother in Ridgway's case, grandmother in Yates's) who abused them as children, and both committed their first crimes as minors, which involved them stabbing a young boy (though Yates's victim died whereas Ridgway's survived). During their tenures as serial killers, both Yates and Ridgway killed women in the dozens and likely over the hundreds; targeted prostitutes, runaways, and other high-risk victims (though Yates also targeted low-risk victims); and were active in Washington state (though Yates was also active in California and Oregon). After their captures, they offered to disclose the locations of over 40 then-undiscovered victims in exchange for the judicial system upturning their death sentences. Finally, Yates's relationship with Jody Wilson, which temporarily motivated him to stop killing altogether, may have been an allusion to Ridgway's third marriage with Judith Mawson, which is cited as a possible reason why Ridgway's frequency of kills lowered significantly. Both were also given nicknames for their crimes. Yates is also very similar to Robert Garrow - Both were serial offenders-turned-spree killers who grew up in dysfunctional households where they were heavily abused by a female family member (Garrow's mother and Yates' grandmother respectively), were juvenile delinquents, targeted female college students (though Yates also targeted others), and killed their victims by stabbing them. Also both had a relationship with a woman with whom they tried to stay out of trouble, only to eventually return to their old habits. Finally, both escaped from prison and were ultimately shot and killed by a law enforcement officer. Known Victims "It's actually 101 names. And I remember ''all of them."'' *At least 101 victims, all killed within at least 17 years all over the West Coast. **Unspecified dates: ***Victims whose names were seen on Rossi's list (limited to only 40) are: ****Alyssa Grassian ****Uma Fogelman ****Violet Makanui ****Lindsey Kerwood ****Mitry Moyer ****Piper Shuster ****Chloe Cheswitt ****Bianca Carmody ****Inez Mortimer ****Macey Wannamaker ****Bristol Evatt ****Nina Grisdale ****Heidi Navone ****Alison Bayfield ****Laura Fairwick ****Sally Gilford ****Natasha Hillbridge ****Joy Lampshire ****Julie Pargrave ****Fiona Stallworth ****Laura Brassford ****Elaine Trangen ****Holly Vaughner ****Tania Miller ****Jessica Tifford ****Scarlet Sprouse ****Donna Millworth ****Teresa Kensington ****Paige Howfield ****Sarah Thomas ****Gina Riverton ****Marlowe Alderman ****Courtney Shandon ****Karen Toluca ****Victoria Cosala ****Kate Corningham ****Lily Traymore ****Carmen Campecho ****Ivy Sunderman ****Lola Winemiller ***Unspecified location: Unnamed victim ***Eureka, California: Charlotte Davis ***Unspecified locations: ****Unnamed victim ****Unnamed victim ****Unnamed victim ****Unnamed victim **Unspecified dates in 1992, Seattle, Washington : ***Rachel Moore ***Tina Dyson **Unspecified dates in 1997, San Francisco, California : ***Olivia Meyer ***Peggy Esther **Unspecified dates in 2005, Los Angeles, California: Lana Cooper **Unspecified dates in 2009, Seattle, Washington: ***Rochelle Jenkins ***Grace Powell *September 2016(?)-January 2017: David Rossi *2017: **January 4-5, Richmond, Virginia: Jody Wilson **January 5-6, Baltimore, Maryland: Regina Franklin ** January 6: *** Unspecified location: Unnamed woman ***Baltimore, Maryland: Stephanie Weatherly }} Notes *Yates is similar to Vincent Perotta ("Natural Born Killer") - Both were prolific, psychopathic, and organized serial killers who were abused by family members (Yates was abused by his grandmother; Perotta was abused by his father); had signatures that involved torturing their victims; committed hundreds of murders in multiple states; committed acts of arson during their childhoods; exclusively killed victims of one gender with only one exception (Yates killed mostly women; Perotta killed mostly men); and were based on infamous real-life serial killers (Yates was based on Henry Lee Lucas; Perotta was based on Richard Kuklinski). *With his total body count of at least 103 people, Thomas Yates is the fourth of only nine unsubs in the show's history who are confirmed to have claimed the lives of hundreds. The others are: **Season One ***Vincent Perotta ("Natural Born Killer") - A prolific robber, serial killer, thrill killer, hitman, cop killer, abductor, gangster, and arsonist who killed over 100 people (an exact number unspecified) **Season Two ***Frank Breitkopf ("No Way Out" and "No Way Out II: The Evilution of Frank") - A serial killer, one-time stalker, abductor, and one-time mass abductor who killed at least 176 people. **Season Five ***Billy Flynn ("Our Darkest Hour" and "The Longest Night") - A prolific serial-turned-spree killer, serial rapist, abductor, robber, and one-time cop killer who killed over 200 people (an exact number unspecified). Flynn also appeared in Season Six. **Season Ten ***Hayman Vasher ("A Thousand Suns") - A homegrown terrorist, mass murderer, and hacker who killed 151 people. **Season Eleven ***Sharon Mayford ("Entropy") - A prolific and international serial bomber, hitwoman, cop killer, one-time mass murderer, and gangster who killed at least 173 people. ***Cat Adams ("Entropy", "Green Light", and "Red Light") - A prolific and international serial killer, hitwoman, gangster, and later proxy killer who killed over 200 people (an exact number unspecified). Adams also appears in Season Twelve **Season Thirteen ***Jake Logan ("Killer App") - A mass murderer, serial bomber, workplace shooter, one-time cop killer, one-time abductor, and serial-turned-spree killer who killed at least 379 people. ***Benjamin David Merva ("Believer" and "300") - A prolific serial killer and cult leader who killed 299 people. Merva also appeared in Season Fourteen. Appearances *Season Seven **"Profiling 101" *Season Eleven **"Pariahville" **"The Storm" *Season Twelve **"The Crimson King" **"Taboo" **"Profiling 202" **"Green Light" *Season Thirteen **"Neon Terror" **"False Flag" References Category:Criminal Minds Characters Category:Criminals Category:Season Seven Criminals Category:Serial Killers Category:Abductors Category:Revenge Killers Category:Prolific Killers Category:Arsonists Category:Psychopaths Category:Season Twelve Criminals Category:Recurring Characters Category:Deceased Criminals Category:Spree Killers Category:Devolving Killers Category:Suicides by Cop Category:Robbers Category:Dormant Killers Category:Abuse Victims Category:Misogynists Category:Mutilators Category:Fugitives